Proposed Updates to the…

Proposed Updates to the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System (OWES)
Environmental Registry Posting 019-6160

In reviewing the proposed revisions to the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System (OWES), I observe that while review of and updates to OWES to stay relatively current with current modern inventory data and scientific analysis is appropriate, those submitted to date with this proposal are largely retrograde.

The removal of MNRF from the administrative and oversight role, positing replacement with local decision makers (e.g. municipalities - page 3) results in the partitioning of administration across political rather than hydrological or watershed boundaries that typify the scope and scale of regional watershed and wetland function and analysis. That the OWES was developed to serve (in part) the needs of the land-use planning process is accurate: reframing this as being generally implemented by municipalities is disingenuous by not providing the context that this is facilitated across lower and upper tier municipal boundaries by Conservation Authorities, who serve to coordinate the feature-based management of the resources across the physiographically arbitrary political boundaries. This focus on municipal management of wetlands is reiterated by the removal of mention of other users of this system such as MNRF and Conservation Authorities, which is both inaccurate and an error (or otherwise) of omission. The partitioning of administration across political boundaries has the potential to result in inconsistent practice between decision-makers (e.g. municipalities), and poor
coordination of management of shared wetlands between neighbouring decision-makers (e.g. municipalities). There are further implications of this decentralizing of wetland administration, with implicit separate data-sets and reports managed by individual decision-making bodies, and not centralized and coordinated from both the data and resource management perspectives.

The removal of MNRF from the review of, and potential assistance with, wetland evaluations is problematic. The result of the removal of regulatory review without replacement by another form of review by subject matter experts, either an approval authority or peer reviews, is predictable and demonstrated in areas where such regulation has been downloaded to non-specialists or subject to self-regulation, like water quality. Given that the primary lesson (reduction in standards of work and conservation outcomes) has been repeatedly learned by the Province in recent decades, it appears that the secondary lesson acquired in these experiences is being applied, and the reduction in standards of work and conservation outcomes is the desired result. The lack of review for such wetland work is confirmed by the assertion that an evaluation, re-evaluation or mapping is considered complete once it has been received (and not reviewed or approved) by a decision maker. This direction is reinforced by the removal of criteria used to identify a wetland file evaluation as being complete, the provision of detailed primary and secondary information sources, and instructions on completing and evaluating wetland scores.

On the reevaluation of wetlands, there is some rationale for their scoping to portions of wetland complexes where warranted by the rationale of project or impact scale. However, there is misunderstanding evident in the "point of time" perspective ascribed to such evaluations or reevaluations, as performing due-diligence in these analyses and evaluations encompasses prior conditions, and a span of time gathering data for the re-evaluation, to place the most recent data
in temporal context and provide for interpretation and trend analysis. Point in time evaluations without considering contextual data are facile.

The removal of the definition of "wetland complex" is almost matched the nearly complete expunging of the term throughout the document. If this concept is to be denied in this new guidance, either the term should be expunged wholly, along with the definition, or the definition and use of the term in the document should remain. As it is with the proposed draft, without a definition the reader is left to wonder what the term "wetland complex" means where it remains used in this draft document, and by way of search engines can determine that it is a real thing. If the intent is to deny the existence and role of a "wetland complex", better to remove the term from this document altogether: I would not advise
this, and would suggest re-incorporation of much of the material dealing with this topic (including the definition) to provide for a more complete and defensible wetland evaluation terminology, if not standards, guidance or quality control (see above). Along these lines, it woudl be enlightening to have a rationale for the removal of guidance and standards for data collection and documentation on endangered or threatened species (SAR), other than the removal of MNRF as a source for data and background information and agency report to. Arguments for the removal of the sections identifying and describing locally important wetlands (as distinct from provincially significant ones) and planning boundaries (particularly as may be used by municipalities as, presumably, decision-makers) are not provided.

In closing, it seems appropriate that, as detailed on page 62 (re: appendix I), the note that revisions to the manuals are periodically necessary to reflect advances in science has been removed, which appears to reflect the new approach to this OWES guidance material. It would be useful to provide a replacement rationale supporting this proposed amendment, and presumably subsequent ones, where the argument for updates is found outside of scientific advances.